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This morning I was conducting an activity in which the kids had to jointly ‘write’ an article to a newspaper . The second standard kids were shown newspaper articles and stories. I suggested that they choose an incident that had occurred that afternoon in the class.. a quarrel between two kids as an incident to be ‘written’.They were very interested.

They ‘reminded ‘me to write the date, place, day etc..

I began writing on the blackboard all that the little ones narrated in sequence.Suddenly a girl said, ” pahele ladke ne doosare ki khoon kar di..(the first boy killed the second..). ” This stumped me for a fraction of a second. I quickly reacted by saying , ” We are newspaper reporters, we write only what has really happened.” I was shocked by the extent of their involvement in the gory details of the fight and also about their awareness levels wrt recent happenings in the country and their ideas of how a fight could end!! Fortunately we were alluding to the kids as pahele ladke ne and doosare ladke ne…otherwise things would have gone a bit too far.

Quickly I managed to bring the story to a conclusion . The kids ended up by saying, ..” tabhee ghanti baji aur teacher ko dekhte hi bachche apni-apni jagah par baith gaye…(the bell rang and the kids went back to their places on seeing the teacher. )

The story had other surprises too. One of the kids who really fought is Ahil who doesn’t speak much. The other ‘fighter’ is Sahil who loves to describe things graphically.The narration of Ahil stunned me because he took active part in narrating his side of the duel very well. And Sahil was too stunned to counter /react /defend effectively !!Luckily for him I was busy writing.

The titles they suggested were:

Do ladkon ki ladai,

bachchon ma maraamaari,

school me ladai,

____ me ladai ( the name of the school.. )

They even suggested that a snap should be put. I drew a rectangle and some stick figures in it.